Domes and Minarets?

Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche

Part 3: Building Code Violations and other Community Spats

After her experience with the mosque on Columbiadamm, Vogelsang appeared determined "not to allow herself to be tricked" and not to allow further Muslim communities to massively violate building code. Later, she successfully blocked an association called Inssan, which had plans to build an immense mosque center in Neukölln, which is already home to 15 official mosques and 31 other prayer rooms. The proposed structure violated "all zoning ordinances," she claims.

The 8,000-square-meter complex had been planned for a strictly residential area with no bus service or parking lots; and it would have been located near the Rütli School, which became infamous throughout Germany in 2006 for its high level of student violence. The building was designed to sit along the street on a strip of land 73 meters wide, rather than the prescribed 13 meters, with an area 40 percent greater than that permitted in the area.

Financing for the project also seemed dubious to Vogelsang. After the builders "almost snottily" rejected requests for disclosure of their sources of funding to district authorities. She eventually found out through the Berlin state government's Interior Ministry that "Saudi and other Arab foundations" were behind the project -- countries ranking at the bottom of the list on the global scale of religious freedom.

The building lot had been purchased by Ibrahim el-Zayat, a representative of the Islamic Community of Germany organization. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, claims the group has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups. Vogelsang doesn't believe the Inssan Association's assertions that there are no strings attached to the donations from the Middle East. "You find someone who is willing to give me €15 to €20 million with no strings attached," she says.

Vogelsang considers herself lucky "that the mosque could be rejected because of construction ordinances," but the Inssan Association is already pursuing a new strategy. It now wants to build the mosque center in a commercial zone in western Berlin's Charlottenburg neighborhood. The site first chosen in a residential part of Neukölln was zoned for chuches, but not meeting places of the mass scale of the mosque center.

The organization has also been taking great pains to publicly position itself as being moderate in its approach to Islam. It arranges PR training for its members, criticizes forced marriages and runs blood drives and environmental campaigns. In this, diehard opponents see less a sign of liberalization than a camouflage intended to deflect attention from the group's dubious funding sources and Islamist backers.

"To get in good with the Berlin elite, you meet with members of the dialogue industry and put on some politically correct events," says Ian Johnson, an American author, Pulitzer Prize winner and Islam expert living in Berlin.

Instead of putting all their cards on the table when they meet with adjacent property owners, leaders of an association wanting to build will strike a deal with "the usual clique of politicians and officials in charge of immigrant issues," says Johnson, and then put "a mosque right down in the middle of the neighborhood." This approach carries the danger that "through the lack of a democratic outlet," residents will be pushed into the arms of right-wing populists who reject the construction projects for "nationalistic or racist reasons."

Public opinion polls generally show that the predominant view in Germany's major cities is that Muslims should have a right to places of worship beyond those hidden behind courtyards -- as long as the plans comply with building laws and fit their surroundings. At the same time, a majority supports the position of journalist Giordano, who suggests there is "no fundamental right to building a mega-mosque," especially if it disrupts the look of the city around it. A balance, says Giordano, must be found "between the back courtyard and the centrally located grand mosque."

The group that is dead set against the construction of any type of mosque is a relatively small minority. But in addition to affected residents and xenophobes whose views cannot be changed, this group of opponents also notably includes Islam experts from the Muslim world.

There are "more than enough mosques in Germany," says Mina Ahadi, co-founder of Germany's Central Council of Ex-Muslims. Ahadi has been under police protection since she publicly renounced Islam -- a crime punishable by death according to radical interpretations of sharia law."

"When a mosque is built," Ahadi says, "the result is that greater pressure is placed on women, and even more children are forced to wear a headscarf to school, which leads to isolation." She accuses German politicians of "boundless naiveté" in their dealings with Islamic organizations that, she argues, "ultimately want to instate sharia law."

Meanwhile, among those local politicians who have no general objections to mosques being built, there is an increasing willingness to investigate the true ambitions and financial backers of the builders more fully than in the past. This is not always easy, however, given the complexity of the situation as well as the fact that imams' sermons are mostly delivered in languages other than German. Moreover, some groups are adept at strategies for concealing intentions that run contrary to the German constitution, using what the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls "legality tactics" -- in other words, using government means to get around government laws.

Even DITIB, the comparatively moderate organization behind the mosque project in Cologne, arouses mistrust. DITIB is the long arm of a religious institution in secular Turkey. "What will most likely happen," ask the residents of Cologne who take part in the protests, "if the feared Islamization of Turkey happens? Will DITIB bring it over here?"

Cologne's Archbishop Joachim Meisner is already warning people about of areas in Germany "where sharia law is increasingly spreading." In the case of DITIB, this warning might be premature or simply inaccurate. At the same time, however, the association is remotely controlled from Ankara and has a reputation for being more concerned with helping to maintain the identity of Turkish immigrants than with helping them integrate in their new homes.

The worldview of Ahmadiyya, the organization that currently wants to build one of its planned 100 mosques in Berlin's northern Pankow district, also causes some unease. Every now and then, rumors escape the mosque walls claiming that many of the group's leaders consider not only women and Jews to be second-class citizens, but also homosexuals. In 2007, an Ahmadiyya Web site stated that the "increasing tendency toward homosexuality" could be traced to the consumption of pork.

Widespread protests against Ahmadiyya by residents of Schlüchtern in the western state of Hesse led the town to change its zoning laws so as to prevent a planned mosque that would have included minarets from being built. In other locations as well, politicians are becoming more and more inclined to use city-planning laws as a way of limiting or completely prohibiting dubious projects by questionable developers.

This is exactly what Bonn did when the city voted against the construction of a cultural center with minarets on the grounds that the project would further aggravate the "uncontested and ongoing formation of ghettos" in a specific Muslim-influenced neighborhood. In Munich, the city government rejected a proposed mosque project because its "disproportionate mass" would have allegedly impacted a square whose buildings are on historical-preservation lists.